


Derek Hale vs. Christmas

by The Feels Whale (miscellea)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Chistmas, Fail Wolf, Gen, Magic, Pre-Slash, Santa Clause
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 13:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miscellea/pseuds/The%20Feels%20Whale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek 0 : Christmas 24</p><p>Or: That one where Derek doesn't believe in Santa Clause, but Santa Clause still believes in him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Derek Hale vs. Christmas

Unlike the rest of the country, December is not Derek’s favorite time of the year

Because Derek? Has always kind of had a whole 'bah humbug' demeanor when then season of enforced jolliness comes around. It's not that he doesn't like Christmas or whatever seasonally-appropriate Holiday it is that you celebrate, it's just that he's not a fan of anything that tells him how he's supposed to feel or behave and that's been a consistent truth for his entire life.

So he snarls at carolers and avoids places with too many Christmas lights. He walks straight past the guys with red kettles and bells. He shreds the cards and ugly sweaters he gets in the mail. He hides when people start coming towards him with brightly wrapped packages and when he was six years old he hid under the couch to wait for Santa so he could run the interloper out of his mom's territory.

She thought it was cute until he explained what he was trying to do. After that she sent him to bed and there was a lump of coal in his stocking and a present under the tree that said:

 _'Better luck next year Derek.  Love, Santa'_.

Eighteen years later he's mostly forgotten about that, but he still closes the flu of his chimney every Christmas Eve because it's pretty much a tradition at this point.

"He gets in anyway, Derek." Laura liked to tease him. "Santa is even more stubborn than you are. You can't stop him."

"Watch me." Derek muttered as he worked on installing little brass locks on all the windows on the first floor of the house. That was ten years ago. He was thirteen and only one of those locks survived. Derek accidentally kicked it across the floor when he first set foot in the burnt out husk of his childhood home six months ago. He picked it up and put in in his pocket for no reason he can really put a name to.

It's sitting in the ashtray in the Camaro now. Sometimes he picks it up and toys with it when he's on a stake out.

Winter in Beacon Hills is fairly damp and miserable. El Nino prevents them from getting much in the way of snow by turning it all into horrible freezing rain that goes on for days on end... which is not awesome when your house only has half a roof and no insulation left.

Derek would stay at the subway station. It's dry there at least, but the security officer who used to patrol the area finally got fired for drinking on the job and has been replaced by someone who actually does his job so Derek's been driven back to Hale House. That’s a love letter from Chris Argent if he’s ever seen one so he's moved into the old tunnels and collapsed all the ones he can't monitor. Isaac would stay with him if he'd allow it, but Derek's not about to let an emotionally compromised teenager hang out around a place this depressing.

On some level he's aware that it's no healthier for him than it is for Isaac, but Isaac has options. Most of Derek's money is tied up in trust funds and annuities until he's twenty-five. Laura was many things, but 'bad with money' was never one of them. The odds of either of them being able to ever hold down a steady job has always been fundamentally nil. His income is enough to keep him fed, clothed, and as mobile as he needs to be. Laura planned for all eventualities except maybe that they would return home one day or that home would have to be rebuilt from the foundation up.

It can be done. He knows it can be done and if he has to live in the wild for a year to make it happen then that's what he's going to do.

...actually, the foundation's probably no good anymore either Derek realizes as he watches a ribbon of water trickle down the earthen wall of his den. He glares at it, hoping he can (by sheer force of will alone) prevent it from getting worse and washing him out of the last place he has to bed down that doesn't cost money or isn't a security nightmare.

Derek knows vaguely what time of the year it is and that it's December (ugh) and that today is Monday. If pressed he'd guess that it's somewhere around the middle of the month.

("It's the Ides of December!" Laura giggled last year. "Gonna draw up a battle plan? I'll help you dig the moat.")

He'd be wrong, of course. It's Christmas Eve and for once in his life he's managed to keep everyone in his life who might think to remind him of this fact at arm's length. Ergo this is the first time in nearly twenty years that Derek has gone to bed the night before Christmas without all his doors and windows locked, without a motion sensor in place outside his home, or a surly dog in the back yard.

So come Christmas morning he does not wake up on a moldy cot in the dank earthen cave with water trickling down the walls where he went to sleep.

He wakes up slowly and warm to the core for the first time in a solid week in a soft bed under a thick goosedown quilt like the one his grandmother made for him when he was eight.

Derek sits up straight in bed thinking for one not-entirely-coherent moment that he's finally managed to be the first werewolf in history to contract hypothermia so it takes him a moment to realize where he is and where he is not. Unless, of course, his den has magically transformed into a modest two bedroom log cabin overnight.

It's not the fanciest place he's ever seen. Extreme Home Makeover: Supernatural Edition, this is not, but the cabin is tidy and weatherproof with a sturdy stone fireplace in the center of the building. There's thick carpet on the floor, real glass in the windows, and beds in every bedroom. He even has a tiny kitchen with a stove, a fridge, and a microwave. The modest livingroom boasts one lone sofa, some empty bookshelves, and a coffee table that has a white card sitting out on top of it.

He knows better than to pick it up, really he does, but for some reason Derek does it anyway and a brass house-key falls out. He picks it up, turns it over in his hand (the weight is familiar somehow), and reads the note.

_'Congratulations on making the 'Nice' list this year, Derek. Love, Santa.'_

That first letter burned six years ago along with the rest of his belongings, but Derek remembers the handwriting because it always made him think of Walt Disney's signature whenever his mom would get it out of his grade school memory book to show off; all rounded letters and loopy dots over the 'i's.

There’s also a deed in the envelope for the property made out to one Derek Alexander Hale.

"What the..." He's stalled out mentally and just stands there until his ear pick up the faint squelch of wet leaves under someone's galoshes.

It finally occurs to him that this is probably a prank and he's standing in someone's house right now ...except when he gets outside it's not a stranger walking up towards the house; it's Stiles and Derek's not sure whether he should be staring at the hideous green and yellow bobble hat the kid's got or the fucking _enormous_ mastiff trotting along behind him.

Stiles spots him at last and perks up a little. "Huh, imagine that." He glances over Derek's shoulder, taking in the cabin with bright inquisitive eyes. He must be in a good mood because Derek automatically braced himself for any half a dozen remarks Stiles could make about Derek’s status as Beacon Bills’ resident crazy mountain man, but none of them seem to be incoming.

"So this is where you're staying?” Stiles asks instead, walking a semi-circle around Derek. “Oh man, Scott owes me like fifty bucks now. He thought you were really living in the warehouse district! So what's up, dude?" He wiggles his phone in Derek's direction and the screen is displaying Google Maps. "I can think of easier ways to invite a guy over. I almost didn't even see the note you left on my dresser. You're lucky I know GPS coordinates when I see them." He pauses and shrugs. "Well, whatever. My tolerance for weird shit has gone way up in the past year. What did you need that involved getting me out of the house at 9 AM on Christmas morning?"

Derek doesn’t have hackles right now, but he swears he can feel them go up anyway. “I didn’t leave you any note. I didn’t invite you here.”

“Well, here I am anyway.” Stiles rocks back on his heels with a considering expression on his face. “You look like you’re about to spontaneously explode. What’s the matter? Did an elf get stuck in your chimney?”

No, thank _god_ , but Derek doesn’t acknowledge the question. Instead he glares down at Stiles’… that can’t be a dog. It has to be a pony in really convincing dog make up. Derek would have remembered smelling a guard dog of that caliber in the area when he was crashing on Stiles’ floor.

It looks back at him with a disinterested ‘so what?’ kind of expression and absolutely no acknowledgement that it’s staring at an Alpha werewolf.

“Since when do you have a dog?” Derek asks instead.

“Merry Christmas to me.” Stiles waggles his eyebrow and drops a hand onto the dog’s ears. He doesn’t even have to lean over to do it and the dog is _laying down_. “My dad is swearing up and down that it wasn’t his idea, but he’s been kind of twitchy about me being on my own since …uh, you know. Gerard. I told him it was some kids from the other team, but I don’t think he really believed me. Plus it was only a matter of time before he ended up inheriting one of the K-9 units. I promise not to report you if he sits down in front of your stash, man.”

“Stash?” Derek frowns and then frowns harder once he puts two and two together. “I don’t have a _stash_ , Stiles.”

“Suuure you don’t.” Stiles laughs that fucking irresistible laugh of his and then looks thoughtful. “You know, I take that back. I believe that you’ve never smoked up before.” He shrugs and digs into his pocket. “You know, Brutus here came with a note? It’s the funniest damn thing. Look.”

_‘You seriously need a guard dog, kid.’_

It’s in the same handwriting as all Derek’s notes and all at once he feels better about …well, most things. He’s never been able to trust that deranged old remnant of half a dozen pagan deities who insists on giving him stuff that he doesn’t deserve every year, but Stiles… Stiles is a good kid; annoying as shit, but good and he’s had a rough six months. He deserves something nice.

“So are you going to invite me in or what?” Stiles says. “Because I’m freezing my ass off here and I wanna see inside.”

“What?” Derek tries not to cast a wild-eyed look over his shoulder at the miracle cabin. He’d almost forgotten about it. “I…”

However, Stiles has evidently gotten bored of waiting for that invitation and barges on in with his carnivorous horse who heads straight for the fireplace and flops down in front of it like he belongs there.  Stiles, at least, kicks his muddy boots off and starts poking through every corner with blatant disregard for Derek’s non-existent privacy.

“Awesome, marshmallows!” Stiles calls out from the kitchenette. “Put another log on. We are toasting the hell out of these!”

 Derek doesn’t deserve this. He knows he doesn’t, but just like every year he can’t help but let his fingers trail along the edges of the big sturdy table in the main room like he did with the model train he got when he was six or the aviator sunglasses he got when he was eighteen. They’re deep in the Reserve out here. It would take hunters months to pinpoint the location of his cabin or longer if he lays down false trails. They might never find it if he starts work on the main house, giving them something else to watch. If he did that then the cabin would be a secret sanctuary just for him and his pack.

A sanctuary… he hasn’t had a place to just rest in _so_ long.

“Scratch that, I found your chocolate.” Stiles emerges from the pantry with an armful of hershey’s bars, marshmallows, and graham crackers. “I hope you like s’mores because we’re making some.”

“I’ll check the wood pile.” Derek sighs.

…as soon as he figures out where it is.

 

-fin


End file.
